Christ's Prayer For His Disciples.8

"Father of goodness and truth, the world has not known you; but I have known you, and these who believe in me know that it is you who sent me. I have revealed you to them, and will continue to reveal you to them, so that I, and the love you have given me, may fully dwell in their hearts.
So be it."

-- Jesus

"In this, then, is God like the child: that he is simply and altogether our friend, our father—our more than friend, father, and mother—our infinite love-perfect God. 

Grand and strong

beyond all that human imagination can conceive of poet-thinking and kingly action, he is delicate beyond all that human tenderness can conceive of husband or wife, homely beyond all that human heart can conceive of father or mother. He has not two thoughts about us. With him all is simplicity of purpose and meaning and effort and end—namely, that we should be as he is, think the same thoughts, mean the same things, possess the same blessedness. 

It is so plain that any one may see it, every one ought to see it, every one shall see it. It must be so. He is utterly true and good to us, nor shall anything withstand his will.

How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this.

Brothers, have you found our king? There he is,

kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were—no, not a truer, for the other is false, but—a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.

The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature; who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand him and be blessed; who never needs to be, and never is, in haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity, who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment

to the age-long cry of his wisdom in the streets; the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans; whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss; the God of history working in time unto Christianity; this God is the God of little children, and he alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted. 

The deepest, purest love of a woman has its well-spring in him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fullness of the treasures of the Godhead, than our imagination can touch their measure. Of him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of his creatures can pass unseen; and while one of them remains unsatisfied, he is not Lord over all.

Therefore, with angels and with archangels, with the spirits of the just made perfect, with the little children of the kingdom, yea, with the Lord himself, and for all them that know him not, we praise and magnify and laud his name in itself, saying Our Father. We do not draw back for that we are unworthy, nor even for that we are hard-hearted and care not for the good. 

For it is his childlikeness that makes him our God and Father. The perfection of his relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils; for our childhood is born of his fatherhood. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him,

“Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.”

George MacDonald, 
The Child In The Midst, Unspoken Sermons I

It is never too late nor early to remember that Jesus is and always has been His Father's Son -- perfectly Divine, Divinely submissive -- above all, devoted to the Eternal Love of God he brought into this world! The love he will continue to reveal to all those with open child-like hearts...like His.

Christ's Prayer For His Disciples.2

"I have revealed you to those that you gave me out of the world.
They were yours,and you gave them to me,
and they have accepted your eternal words.
Now they too know that everything you have given me comes from you.
I have faithfully delivered to them the words that you gave me;
they have believed them,
and know in their hearts that I have come from God, sent by you on their behalf." 

--Jesus

A recap of my revelation:

• Death took my dad at the age of 31, I was 7. My mom, sister, brother and I started attending church for the first time in our family history. I responded to the invitation to Eternal Life at Vacation Bible School...pretty much every year.

He revealed his Fatherhood. 

•  At the age of 11 I came under conviction of sin while at a church camp; but didn't kneel down to confess until I went home alone in my bedroom and gave my heart to Him.

He revealed His redemption. 

•  At the age of 12 I had a car/bicycle accident that strengthened my conviction that God, my Father, was carefully watching over me and had plans for my welfare.

He revealed His protection.
 

• Some of my fondest memories are working at Spring Hill Camp under the mentor-ship of Enoch Olsen where I learned biblical principles of discipleship as well as the unconditional love and dedicated mission of the body of Christ.

He revealed His wisdom.

• While attending college at Trinity in Illinois, I was involved in evangelistic outreaches that started me attempting to overcome my natural inclination to fear and self-will.

He revealed His leadership.

• I met my future wife while attending a Wednesday Night Youth Group meeting where I took it upon myself to correct the leader over some doctrinal trifle. Neither one was impressed much...but (she still married me), after our wedding we moved to East Lansing where we initially fellowshipped with believers in a traditional church. We valued their friendship, but desired deeper revelation.

He revealed how to hunger for His righteousness.

• That hunger was intensified when we met followers of Jesus, in what became known as MSU Bible Study, because the greatest revelation comes through obedience. Through their lives they connected the Word of God with the power to overcome the ordinary struggles of life.

He revealed the Power of His Word.

• We dedicated ourselves to being obedient followers of Jesus: we learned to follow His example wherever we saw the Truth in it

• a quiver full of babies, eight sons in all!
• attempting to raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord
• managing my family
• being excellent in whatever we put our hands to
• reaching the world with the gospel of Christ
• serving others when the opportunity presented itself; including the desire to pastor

He revealed His Life in me!

• During a worship service at Teen Mania's summer camp, I was down on my knees unashamedly worshiping God amongst several hundred teenagers when a little girl, barely a teen herself, came up to me and touched me on the shoulder and said, "God wants you to know He loves you..." she turned and disappeared into the crowd and I never saw her again. It was a peculiar message, in word, not profound, but in Spirit it was a sacred pronouncement.

He revealed His care for me.

• My son Jesse pointed me to the writings of George MacDonald.

He revealed the Truth that is faith in Jesus.

Let MacDonald explain why Jesus' revelation of the Father was not merely information about God but the uniqueness of our individual lives to Him:

"Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else; for when he is perfected he shall receive the new name which no one else can understand. 

Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship him,— can understand God as no man else can understand him.
This or that man may understand God more, may understand God better than he, but no other man can understand God as he understands him.
God give me grace to be humble before thee, my brother, that I drag not my simulacrum [impression, likeness] of thee before the judgment-seat of the unjust judge, but look up to thyself for what revelation of God thou and no one else canst give.
As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father.

And for each God has a different response. With every man he has a secret—the secret of the new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter. I say not it is the innermost chamber—but a chamber into which no brother, nay, no sister can come.

From this it follows that there is a chamber also...a chamber in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man, out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren.

This is that for which He was made: to reveal the secret things of the Father."

(from The New Name, Unspoken Sermons I)

O may we continue to marvel at Thy grace and love for us in knowing you Jesus Lord of Life!